It was a hotly contested, undisputed lightweight title fight last Saturday night in Las Vegas won by champ Devin Haney over challenger and former multi-division world champ Vasiliy Lomachenko. And, while the action was entertaining, the pay per view audience was only “lukewarm” through Top Rank Boxing and ESPN+ PPV.
Our insider Dan Rafael reported Wednesday night that the aggregate audience of Haney’s close, controversial decision win through ESPN+ service, and other forms of PPV, like our friends at PPV.com, etc., only totaled to around 150,000 buys.
From Dan’s Substack item:
“The event generated about 150,000 pay-per-view buys, multiple industry sources told Fight Freaks Unite. Another source said the fight did more than 150,000. The number includes streaming sales via ESPN+ as well as traditional cable and satellite services with around 115,000 coming via digital and another 35,000 to 40,000 via cable and satellite.
With a retail price of $59.99 for the pay-per-view that means it grossed about $9 million in domestic television revenue.”
As a reference point, the recent Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia pay per view in Vegas back in late April won by Davis on a TKO did massively well by present day standards. It’s believed that Davis-Garcia was in excess of 1.2 million purchases or over six times the buys, as Haney-Lomachenko in PPV audience.
Most non-heavyweight PPV’s are struggling to get more than 200,000 or 300,000 buys in the current boxing landscape.
It should also be noted that the Davis-Garcia PPV being offered via Premier Boxing Champions and Showtime was priced significantly higher at $84.99 creating a massive windfall over over $100 million in PPV revenue alone for the fighters and everyone involved.
Back to Saturday night, it was the first time that Haney or Lomachenko had been part of a main event PPV and clearly the event generated interest, as Top Rank announced the MGM Grand Garden Arena as a sellout of over 14,000 fans. However, Dan Rafael reports that the live gate generated a fraction of Davis-Garcia a month earlier at the T-Mobile Arena, which seats about 4,000 more for boxing.
Rafael has been told the live gate for Haney-Lomachenko was a “low seven figure gate,” while the Davis-Garcia bout was much more expensively priced on average and created over $20 million in live gate revenue.
We discussed further on our most recent “Fight Freaks Unite Recap” Podcast of Haney-Lomachanko that in terms of negotiation that Davis will unquestionably have more financial leverage in a proposed bout with the undisputed lightweight champ Haney. You can hear that debate/discussion by clicking below,
